J.J. Cannon of the Lexington Legends (Astros/South Atlantic
League) celebrated his 10th anniversary as a minor league manager in style,
leading his team to the best record in the minors and earning Baseball Weekly's
Minor League Manager of the Year award.

The Legends cruised to a 92-48 record and didn't lose a
game in the Class A South Atlantic League playoffs, ousting Hagerstown (Giants)
and leading Asheville (Rockies) 2-0 in the best-of-five series, before being
named champions when the terrorist attacks Sept. 11 led to the cancellation
of the rest of the finals.

Cannon was in his first year as a manager in the Astros
organization, after coming from the Braves system, and faced a few obstacles,
some more obvious than others.

For the 2001 season, the minors split the 60 full-season
Class A teams into two tiers, fast and slow, with each organization required
to have one club at each level. Because of contract obligations, the Astros
found themselves with two slow-A teams, the Michigan Battle Cats (Midwest League)
and the Legends.

This led to the potentially touchy situation of dealing
with the dozens of players who, deserving as they might be of playing at high-A
or even Double-A, found themselves back in slow-A at either Michigan or the
Astros' new club in Lexington, Ky.

It might appear on paper to be a win-win situation, with
at least half of the players at each team potentially overqualified for their
level. But it also had big potential to backfire. For many young players, morale
is as essential for a winning team as fundamentals.

So when the Astros began their search for the Legends'
first manager, they knew whom they wanted: Joseph Jerome Cannon, who led the
Braves' rookie-level Danville club in 1999-2000. No team he managed finished
below second place in either half of play since 1997.

Cannon made it to the majors with the Astros after being
their first-round pick in 1974, but most of his professional career  20
years  was spent with the Blue Jays as player, coach and manager. After
coaching at Double-A Knoxville for six years, Cannon started his managerial
career in 1991. He was named New York-Penn League Manager of the Year in 1993.

But he stayed in touch with friends in the Houston organization,
most notably Tom Wiedenbauer, the Astros' director of minor league instruction.
Wiedenbauer, along with Tal Smith, the organization's president of baseball
operations, urged the club to pursue Cannon.

Assistant general manager Tim Purpura received permission
from the Braves to talk with Cannon, who also was being pursued by several other
organizations for managerial spots as high as Double-A.

But in his heart he was still an Astro, and the Astros
were impressed by his communication skills, passion for the game and ability
to get along with his players.

Known as an aggressive and unconventional manager, he seemed
the perfect fit to take young, talented and fundamentally sound players to the
top of their league and their game.

As Purpura saw it, Cannon came into a new situation with
two big stumbling blocks to overcome immediately.

"He came to a new organization after two years with the
Braves and about 100 years with the Blue Jays, and when you do that, you walk
on eggshells for a while because you don't know people's roles," he said.

Also new was the Lexington connection, pro baseball's first
in decades. Lexington is a lovely college city that had been hungering for a
minor league team, but it had a state-of-the-art stadium that wasn't quite finished
and a front office that wasn't quite complete. It also had a staff that was
enthusiastic but lacked an intensive baseball background.

Add to that a roster on which at least half the players
had every reason to believe they should be playing a level or two higher, and
it could have been a long, hot summer for Cannon.

Instead, he combined with veteran pitching coach Charley
Taylor and young hitting coach Jayhawk Owens to lead the team to the best record
in the minors.

For Cannon, the biggest challenge was not the new organization
or the new stadium.

"It was making sure that all the guys had a chance to play
and to excel," he said. "And everyone contributed at different times, in the
starting lineup or off the bench."

After Lexington finished the first half at 50-20 and clinched
a spot in the playoffs, it would have been easy for malaise and dissatisfaction
to set in. The team stumbled out of the second-half gate but then regrouped.

"There's a tendency to have a mental letdown after clinching,
but it didn't take too long to realize when we were losing to last-place teams
that something needed to be done," Cannon said.

The Legends weren't the only ones who understandably could
have fallen off in the second half. Cannon, 48, suffered a personal loss much
bigger than anything on the field when his father died of lung cancer on July
5, just before the July 13 birthday that father and son shared. Diagnosed two
weeks before his death, the former Marine and Vietnam veteran had been given
six months to live, and Cannon had been looking forward to his father finally
seeing him manage a game for the first time.

But despite the hardships both on and off the field, the
team found its focus and went 42-28 in the second half.

Cannon's destination for 2002 is unknown because the Astros
have not decided on next year's coaching staffs. The organization still will
have two low-A teams, so he could go another round with the Legends.

One thing is a pretty safe bet, however: Wherever Cannon
lands, success is likely to follow.